19.08.1999

Debate and controversy

Communist University ’99

The CPGB’s annual Communist University was held in Uxbridge in the first week of August. Some 80 CPGB members, supporters and friends, as well as comrades from other political currents, debated a wide range of subjects in 20 intensive sessions.

Once again the school highlighted some sharp political differences within our organisation on a number of questions, and these were debated vigorously and on occasion heatedly. These arguments, however, formed part of a constructive and honest search for truth and clarity. Some of our political opponents, in contrast, argued dogmatically from fixed ideological positions which they were intent on defending, however bizarre the conclusions they led to.

Alan Thornett of Socialist Outlook provided an example of rigid dogmatic thinking in his debate with Anne Murphy on ‘The left and Europe’. Comrade Murphy explained the CPGB position, that the convergence of European capitalist states into a unified superstate not only provides the working class with the opportunity to unite to fight this new state, but also makes it imperative to do so. For comrade Thornett, the EU is simply a reactionary institution, and must be opposed, and British withdrawal promoted. This leads Socialist Outlook, however unwillingly, into the same camp as rightwing nationalists who want to ‘save the pound’.

Another example of the dire consequences of dogmatic thinking and mechanical logic was provided by the International Bolshevik Tendency, in their opening on ‘The left and the Balkans war’. The IBT comrades tried to justify their position of unconditional defence of Slobodan Milosevic and his regime. For the IBT, any imperialism is worse than any non-imperialism, which, however undemocratic and anti-progressive, must be supported in a war between the two. The IBT accepted that the Milosevic government was a particularly reactionary regime oppressing the working class in Serbia itself and guilty of mass terror against the Kosovars. But they still supported Milosevic in the war and would have done all they could to help bring about a Serbian victory. The IBT appeared to understand that military defeat often provides the best conditions for revolution. Yet it dismissed this as unimportant compared to the dogmatic necessity of backing Serbia. The IBT also effectively stopped supporting the right of Kosova to self-determination. The democratic rights of the Kosovars, and even their right to live, took second place in IBT thinking.

Lenin said: “Whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and political sense” (VI Lenin CW Vol9, Moscow 1977, p29). The IBT provides a disturbing example of the accuracy of this statement.

The importance of consistent democracy was a main theme which emerged. From the discussion on GMOs, in which CPGB members agreed that what matters is democratic control of new technology by the working class, to the discussion of Peter Tatchell’s opening on gay liberation, democracy was seen as crucial.

The speaker from Cymru Goch, Tim Richards, began with a brief history of Wales and the Welsh working class movement, and concluded that the national liberation of Wales can only be won by making it a socialist state. He claimed that, unlike Plaid Cymru, Cymru Goch is not nationalist, supports left unity, and is willing to cooperate with revolutionaries fighting in England. However, during the discussion, he declared that he did not understand what was meant by ‘centralising’ the fight against Blair, or why it is needed. “We don’t need more centralism,” he said. “We need autonomy and equality.” In reply Mark Fischer said the reforged CPGB, uniting and synthesising all specific struggles, is the best way forward in the fight for socialism in Britain. But this does not mean an autocratic central committee: it means relevant sections and committees having autonomy within the Party in order to most effectively take on the existing state. For example, as the EU takes on state form, we will need to build a Communist Party of the European Union. Our goal is to seek voluntary unity and centralisation of the working class on the British, European and world level.

Dave Osler, speaking on ‘Scargillism’, correctly characterised Arthur Scargill as a class fighter able to lead workers in struggle, but also a bureaucrat and “a Stalinist of the old school”, advocating a reformist road to an authoritarian state. The party Scargill founded, the SLP, has reached a dead end and we need to look at where it went wrong. The SLP was marred by a lack of internal democracy, said comrade Osler; this was its fatal flaw.

However, he also claimed that the term ‘democratic centralism’ is “indelibly stained” in the eyes of progressive workers, and admitted that although the group he belongs to, the Socialist Democracy Group, uses centralism, it avoids the term. Comrade Osler said people advocating a Communist Party, rather than a broad left party of recomposition, are in a minority on the left, and “probably most of them are in this room”.

In reply Jack Conrad said that we have all experienced groups which make a travesty of democratic centralism, and more recently, broad left formations such as the Network of Socialist Alliances which loudly claim to reject centralism in favour of broadness and openness, but actually use bureaucratic methods to exclude communists. He said that democratic centralism is not something alien to working class activity, but an easily understood concept for every striker or trade union militant - freedom of criticism, unity of action.

The completeness of the degeneration of the SLP is demonstrated by the fact that after all the other witch-hunters were themselves witch-hunted out of it, Scargill was left with Roy Bull as his vice-president. Bull spoke in a debate with Peter Tatchell on ‘Gay liberation and single-issue campaigns’. Bull’s homophobia is well known. When challenged by Bob Paul to reply to a letter he had published in the Weekly Worker which quoted Bull’s homophobic statements, Bull was silent. Indeed he hardly mentioned gay liberation in his speech. He appeared, however, to have retreated from his previous position that campaigns around such issues are purely and simply ‘diversions’. This is of course a completely wrong approach for Marxists. For us, support for all the oppressed now is a profoundly moral question, as well as a political one. Marx’s vision of human emancipation means far more than ending capitalism. It means freeing people to be themselves and live full lives on their own terms - something the non-Marxist Tatchell apparently understands better than the Stalinite Bull.

The profound moral dimension of Marxism was discussed in an inspiring talk by István Mészáros entitled ‘Is communism a utopia?’ His answer was an emphatic ‘no’. We hope to publish the text of this and other speeches in future issues of the Weekly Worker.

Another theme which ran through the week concerned Ken Livingstone, and whether he will contest the election for mayor of London as an independent. Many guest speakers gave their opinion of how the left should react if this happens. Dave Osler was firmly against Livingstone. Bob Pitt, in contrast, thought that the prospect of a Livingstone-led breakaway in London would be an interesting one. Nevertheless, in his opening on ‘The left and Labour’ he defended the Blair government as being at least better than the Tories and looked for progressive elements in Blair’s ‘third way’.

The main disagreement within the ranks of the CPGB itself was on the national question. A number of comrades disagreed with Jack Conrad’s view that in a united Ireland a protestant majority, three- or four-county ‘national’ entity should have self-governing autonomy up to and including the right to separate. This issue was vigorously debated following comrade Conrad’s opening on ‘The politics of the Northern Ireland peace process’. The opposition to Conrad more or less said that the Protestants of Northern Ireland are in no sense a nation and have no right to self-determination, which apparently can mean only the right to continue to hate and oppress Catholics. For these comrades such a call amounted to “rights for loyalism” and British imperialism. In reply other comrades said that the task for communists is to win the Protestants away from reaction and to support for a united Ireland and working-class self-liberation, through championing their rights.

This question was returned to during many of the sessions, especially the debate following comrade Mark Fischer’s opening on ‘The break-up of Yugoslavia’. It deepened and developed into a discussion of what constitutes a nation, and whether only ‘classical’ nations should have the right to self-determination. Most comrades agreed that advocating this national right for units as small as a few villages is absurd and impracticable. The right to national self-determination is appropriate only for historically constituted peoples occupying a definite territory. But life is complex and fluid, and special cases such as Wales and Scotland, although not nations as scientifically defined, politically require the right to self-determination. Some comrades, including Dave Craig of the RDG, disagreed with this and said that logically you must either accept Scotland is a nation, as he does, or deny it the right to self-determination. This mechanical logic, which puts categories first and the complexities of real life second, is more typical of the dogmatic thinking exhibited by our ‘Trotskyite’ political opponents during the week.

Hillel Ticktin gave two openings on ‘The decline of capitalism’ and ‘Why the collapse of the USSR was not foreseen’. The first opening was particularly interesting to CPGB comrades, who have been studying Marxist crisis theory in our seminars. At the end of the opening on the collapse of the USSR comrade Ticktin repeated his view that capitalism could not be restored in Russia, and that the west has no solution for the former USSR. The only way out of the present crisis was through working class revolution. As, according to Ticktin, no other long-term solution was possible, he was optimistic for the future.

All comrades enjoyed the school and found it stimulating and indeed inspiring. All the sessions were worthwhile and many provided material for future Weekly Worker articles.

Mary Godwin